Picture-level just noticeable difference for symmetrically and asymmetrically compressed stereoscopic images: Subjective quality assessment study and datasets

The Picture-level Just Noticeable Difference (PJND) for a given image and compression scheme reflects the smallest distortion level that can be perceived by an observer with respect to a reference image. Previous work has focused on the PJND of images and videos. In this paper, we study the PJND of symmetrically and asymmetrically compressed stereoscopic images for JPEG2000 and H.265 intra coding. We conduct interactive subjective quality assessment tests to determine the PJND point using both a pristine image and a distorted image as a reference. We find that the PJND points are highly dependent on the image content. In asymmetric compression, there exists a perceptual threshold in the quality difference between the left and right views due to the binocular masking effect. We generate two PJND-based stereo image datasets (one for symmetric compression and one for asymmetric compression) and make them accessible to the public.